Month: May 2014

The first week of our #NBProchoice twitter campaign has come and gone and we are getting ready to begin on week two today.

Hundreds of tweets were sent out to MLAs and Premier Alward. ZERO responses were sent back. ZERO. Let that sink in for a moment. These public servants openly attended an event celebrating the status quo and/or further restriction of reproductive healthcare and bodily autonomy, not to mention flat-out endorsing NB’s violation of the Canada Health Act, Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and UN human rights standards.

Two months have gone by with absolutely no response from the sitting government. We send messages to them every single day through letters, emails, tweets and phone calls. We are here, we want to talk, and no one cares.

This movement cannot lose steam. We need to show that we are not going anywhere, this issue is NOT going away, it WILL be an election issue, and we WILL remember every single minute of silence.

The annual New Brunswick March For Life anti-choice rally took place on May 15th of this year, starting at the Legislative Building and continuing on down to the Women’s Care Centre which neighbours the closing Morgentaler Clinic in Fredericton (see CBC article here).

So far we have counted and named twenty three New Brunswick MLAs in attendance at this rally, an alarming number to be sure, but let’s allow this to help us fuel our fight. We know what we’re up against, because they showed up in public to support the status quo.

We have been writing, emailing and calling our representatives with little to no response. Twitter is a public avenue for these MLAs to connect with their citizens. Let’s see if they continue to ignore us.

We have created a schedule that starts on Tuesday May 20th and continues each workday until we’ve run out of MLAs with active twitter accounts who were in attendance.

Don’t forget to add the premier @PremierNB to your tweet each day as well.

In order to ensure the maximum number of people see your tweets, make sure you have at least one character before directly addressing someone on twitter. You can phrase your tweet so their handle is inside your statement:

“Hey @billfrasermla, I can make my own medical decisions! #NBProchoice”.
Or you can add a period before their handle: “.@jodycarr_mla thinks his opinion should shape the course of my life #NBProchoice”

Just keep in mind that Tweets addressed to someone (“@whoever followed by your statement”) get put in your “replies” and don’t get as many views!

Let’s write messages, re-tweet each other, and keep it focused on law/politics. Every person deserves full, uncompromising autonomy over their own body. Regulation 84-20 endangers lives and infringes on our human rights.

While we want to publicly address this on twitter we think it is also important to name every MLA in attendance, and so we have done so by listing their email addresses here:

We write to inform you of a likely contravention of the accessibility principle ‎of the Canada Health Act (CHA) by the New Brunswick government and to request that you send a letter forthwith invoking the Dispute and Resolution process (DAR) in order to address the issue.

As you are aware, ‎the Fredericton Morgentaler clinic will be forced to close its doors at the end of July due to lack of public funding. At the same time, provincial regulation limits access to pregnancy termination to two hospitals with the required approval of two physicians.

There is already an unacceptable waiting list of as long as two weeks for some women requesting termination. With the closure of the Morgentaler clinic, this waiting list will lengthen.‎

As you are aware, there is a time line after which a termination of pregnancy is no longer‎ clinically appropriate and increases the risk to the pregnant woman. This means that many New Brunswick women may be denied access to safe, timely, legal abortion based on provincial residency.

Furthermore, many women many not have the financial means to travel to a neighbouring province in order to access a safe procedure in a timely manner. Those who can afford to do so will place a greater cost and wait times burden on neighbouring provinces.

The principle of accessibility in the Canada Health Act requires provinces to provide access to medically necessary services regardless of where they live or their ability to pay.

Moreover, access to safe timely abortion is legal in Canada.

We hope to have a speedy response to this letter, Minister. The medical needs of New Brunswick women depend on it.